About me

My name is Shiling Liang¹. I am a final-year PhD student at the Laboratory of Statistical Biophysics, EPFL. Before I started my PhD, I obtained M.Sc. in Physics at EPFL and B.Sc. in Physics from Beijing Normal University and the University of Manchester².

My main research interest is on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and its application to biochemical systems. During my master and beginning of PhD, I was investigating how a temperature gradient can break symmetries in both chemical and real space, which may lead to the origin of life. Recently, I am working to reveal the thermodynamic cost to break symmetries in biochemical systems. I am also interested in stochastic thermodynamics and all kinds of thermo-kinetic bounds in stochastic and out-of-equilibrium systems.

If my research resonates with you and you'd like to discuss it further, please don't hesitate to email me.

I expect to defend my PhD in August 2024 and am actively seeking a postdoctoral position starting in late 2024. I am broadly interested in the energetics of living systems across all scales, and I want to understand the energetic cost of various biological phenomena, such as pattern formation, information processing, etc. I am also interested in exploring new fields that exhibit emergent complexity, from the neural network level to collective behaviors. Please reach out if you think my background and interests are a good match for your open position! (email: shiling.liang@epfl.ch)

News

_{2023.10.11 I will be visiting MPI-PKS in Dresden from November 19 to 25, 2023.
2023.08.28 Check out our new preprint arXiv:2308.14497, which reveals the thermodynamic cost to break temporal symmetry.
2023.04.29 My contributed talk on thermodynamic bounds on symmetry breaking in WOST IV has been accepted.
2023.04.20 My contributed talk on thermodynamic bounds on symmetry breaking in StatPhys28 has been accepted.}

Selected Publications

Thermodynamic costs of symmetry breaking

Thermodynamic bounds on time-reversal asymmetry

_{S. Liang & S. Pigolotti}
arXiv 2308.14497 (2023)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Temporal-coarse-grained measure of time-reversal asymmetry can be used to infer non-equilibrium driving forces.

Universal thermodynamic bounds on symmetry breaking in biochemical systems

_{S. Liang, P. De Los Rios & D. M. Busiello}
arXiv 2212.12074 (2022)
_{Poster | Video}

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Network geometry reveals universal thermodynamic bounds in various of biochemical systems, ranging from the error rate of kinetic proofreading to the contrast of reaction-diffusion pattern.

Chemical systems in non-isothermal environments

Emergent thermophoretic behavior in chemical reaction systems

_{S. Liang, D. M. Busiello & P. De Los Rios}
New Journal of Physics 24 123006 (2022)
_{Poster | Summary}

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Thermophoresis can emerge from reaction-diffusion system. Favouring cold or hot regions depends on the correlation between transport properties and energies.

Dissipation-driven selection of states in non-equilibrium chemical networks

_{D. M. Busiello, S. Liang, F. Piazza & P. De Los Rios}
Communication Chemistry 4 16 (2021)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Chemical reaction network with kinetic asymmetry can harvest thermal energy to break symmetry in chemical space.